DESPITE comprehensive scru tiny by doctors, it remains unknown what caused Eddy Curry to become so sick he required immobilization at the Knicks’ Saratoga hotel (and two trips to the hospital) for the team’s entire five-day training camp. Team officials stated he had contracted a bacterial infection, whatever that means.

“At first they thought I had strep throat. Then doctors were worried the infection might attack my heart. But they never identified for sure what hit me. I still don’t know,” Curry said Tuesday night in the wake of a stomach ailment that forced him to sit out all but 6:21 of the 76ers’ win at the Garden.

I told Curry word had it a contaminated needle may have been the origin of his mysterious illness, that a trip to the tattoo parlor three or four days prior to the Knicks’ assembly triggered the trouble.

Confirmation denied!

“You’re telling me something I haven’t heard before,” Curry said. “I did get a tattoo, but it was three or four weeks before camp, not days.”

I was down to my last morsel of hearsay. I gently led my witness. “Supposedly, the area around that tattoo was red and open.”

“No, by then it had healed. The redness and the swelling had gone away,” Curry said.

His mater-of-fact demeanor convinced me he was sincere, so that was the end to that line of questioning. Then again, as long as we’re on the subject of tats, it’s hard to believe anyone flaunts more ink-per-square-inch than Curry.

Curry is unable to tell me the exact number of tattoos that decorate almost every nook and cranny of his vast terrain, which, by the way, contrary to popular prejudice, is not too flabby; the 6-11 boulder is merely massive from back-to-front, his legs are like pilings, his arms like turnstiles, his fingers are as big as my wrist. That’s what makes him impossible to defend in the ditch, one-on-one; once he plants it’s too late to pray and plead for help.

Could Curry stand to curb his enthusiasm at the counter? Yeah, he may have an extra layer of fat . . . but it’s on top of muscle . . . that’s on top of Tyrannosaurus Rex bones. He wasn’t branded Baby Shaq accidentally. Accordingly, it’s infantile to measure him in terms of pounds; every weighty body part is in proportion to his configuration.

Forward observers are confused; Curry’s isn’t overweight, his curse is lack of condition, much to the displeasure of Scott Skiles in Chicago and denigration by Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre in New York.

Mike D’Antoni’s burn-rubber system serves to accentuate that negative. Curry’s sole objective in life at this playing-catch-up point should be to build stamina. Once he finds that second wind and gains that endurance, once he’s feeling good, that’ll be his ideal playing weight; damn what the scale says.

On the other hand, a strong case can be made for Curry far exceeding the coloring cap.

“I’ve got about 50 tattoos,” he estimates. “I used to think I had more than anybody else in the league, but I think J.R. Smith has me beat. His tattoos have tattoos.”

I asked Curry about his last one, where it’s situated and what it says. He lifted up his right arm and right below the pit is a line by Lil’ Wayne, Eddy’s favorite rapper, from his current best-selling album, “The Carter III: What’s a goon to a goblin?”

Curry frequented his first tattoo parlor when he was 16. Got his girlfriend’s name emblazoned on his leg.

Is that your wife?

“Naw,” Curry flinched. “That’s the one problem with tattoos; you got ’em for life. But she is the mother of my oldest child, and we’re cool. So, it’s all good.”